How to Write Easy-to-Understand Tutorials

By PChip | Category: Writing Tips |

As a DSD-Professional one of the things you’ll want to make sure you do for your customer is give them lessons on how to best use your products. There are already so many tutorials online for our customers to learn from. But don’t let that keep you from writing your own too.

By providing your own tutorial you are showing your customers another level of your expertise. You are also letting them know that you want to help them be successful in their digi-scrapping activities. Plus - hosting your own tutorial keeps your viewers at your site rather than bouncing away to another web location.

I recently received an email from a fellow digi-scrapper asking for information about the format of tutorials. The tutorials that get the best responses for me are those that are kept simple, but provide thorough descriptions, and include lots of pictures.

My Tutorial Writing Format

1. Opening paragraph is a short description of what the viewer will learn.
2. Provide a list of supplies or software products used in the tutorial screen shots
3. Divide the creative process into small activities and describe each one in a step-by-step format.
4. Include pictures for steps that are easier to understand by seeing an example.
5. Always show a picture of the finished project/technique.
6. Close with a few suggestions of how they can further use what they’ve learned.

Two Additional Tips for Writing Tutorials

1. If your tutorial is not for beginners, I recommend you also include in your opening paragraph a description of what information or skills the viewer needs to have before accomplishing your tutorial. Here’s an example of such a statement:

This is an advance tutorial with general descriptions of the basic creative process. These instructions assume you already have a general understanding of the basics in your software product such as opening blank documents, setting properties and locating menu options and that you are accustomed to working with multiple layers in your projects.

2.Include tips and tricks throughout your tutorial. Digi-scrappers love learning about easier ways to accomplish things, shortcut keys, and the kirky things that pertain to their specific software packages.

If you have a different tutorial format that has been successful for you and your customers, I’d love to hear about it! Feel free to leave links in our comments to the page(s) where you post your tutorials too. Everyone loves to learn a little something new now and again.

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